


Love is stronger than Death

by hobgoblin123



Category: Coldfire Trilogy - C. S. Friedman
Genre: Anal Sex, Blood and Gore, Cesarean Section, Damien gets the surprise of his life, Final Battle, First Time, Gerald has a vision, God gives Gerald the chance to atone for his sins, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Sibling Incest, Inquisition Ernan style, Karril and Gerald play a nasty trick on Damien, Karril learns that there's more than pleasure, Love is a battlefield, M/M, Mind Control, Mpreg, Religious Fanaticism, Religious War, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2019-04-05 07:04:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14038806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hobgoblin123/pseuds/hobgoblin123
Summary: Drunk on their victory over the Hunter, the Church proceeds to unleash hell on the pagan multitudes. Religious persecutions and Inquisition trials soon are a daily occurrence. Gerald and Damien try to prevent the worst happening, but each of them has to battle his own demons. Betrayals of trust and near death experiences aren't exactly helpful. Will they overcome their differences and join forces again, or will they find themselves on different sides this time?





	Love is stronger than Death

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own the Coldfire Trilogy, and no profit whatsoever is intended.
> 
> Credit: The ancient text Damien quotes (and the headline) is from the Song of Songs, also known as Song of Solomon (Old Testament). 
> 
> A/N: This is basically a pimped-up version of the story I posted on ffnet a few years ago. It contains quite a lot of potentially offensive topics and doesn't have a happy ending (see warnings and tags), so please read at your own risk...

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

  
"…for love is stronger than death, passion fiercer than the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame.  
Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it."

  
Stumbling down the ash-covered slopes of Mount Shaitan, Damien had thought that the worst was behind him now, that nothing could come even remotely close to helplessly witnessing the Hunter's ultimate sacrifice in terms of direness, but he'd been wrong. Tarrant's subsequent heart failure had proved a veritable nightmare no less crushing than seeing him die up there on that vulking volcano. After he had completed the Healing and the adept was starting to breathe more normally, he collapsed at his side, too shattered to drink more than a sip of water, not to mention rummaging around in his pack in search for a few morsels of solid fare. But he kept a watchful eye on Gerald who'd already dozed off, as bone-wrenchingly tired as himself, until he was sure that the crisis was over and his patient would make a full recovery. Only then did he finally give in to utter exhaustion. Already half asleep, he cradled Tarrant in his arms in an instinctive protective motion, pulled the man's tattered cloak over both of them and was lost to the world as well.

Hours later, Damien was awakened rather rudely by a blow to his stomach, caused by Gerald's frantic attempts to disengage himself from the cloak that had somehow gotten stuck beneath them. His alarm bells ringing, he jolted into a sitting position and scanned the cave for a threat, but found none. Everything seemed perfectly fine in the first light of day. Some early birds were greeting the morning outside, and neither demon nor human foe had intruded into their shelter. If not for the adept's utterly strange behaviour, he would have liked nothing better than going back to sleep, certainly well-deserved after everything they had gone through. But it wasn't to be.

Tarrant had retreated into the back of the cave by now, crouching against the wall as if he wanted to merge with it. Even without the surge of pure, unadulterated terror infiltrating his mind via the channel, Damien would have known that something was seriously wrong with him, although he still had no idea what kind of misfortune could have befallen his usually so composed companion to reduce him to such a state. It was frightening, to say the least.

His deeply ingrained healer instincts kicking in, he took a closer look at Gerald. It was hard to see in the deep shadows lingering at the cavern's end, but it seemed to him that the adept's heart condition hadn't raised its ugly head again. Tarrant was panting alright, but not desperately gasping for air like the night before, and the alarming blueish tint to his lips and eyelids had been replaced by a much healthier hue. At least as far as his skin was visible under all those layers of ash and grime, that is.

All at once, the Neocount's struggle culminated in a wordless but utterly desperate cry for help that rang through Damien's mind like a bell, drowning his own capacity for rational thinking in a sea of dread. _Blinding sunlight, threatening to burn him to ashes. No place to hide, no shelter from the killing light, and the abysses of hell were opening up for him. Not again! VRYCE!_

Damien's hands flew up to his temples. For a few seconds there was nothing but pain, caused by the raw power behind Tarrant's soundless scream, but then realization hit him like a ton of bricks. If he wasn't completely mistaken, and he was pretty sure he wasn't, the adept hadn't fully grasped yet that he was human again, that from now on he could walk under the sun's warming rays like any other man instead of being condemned to eternal night. No wonder that he was scared out of his wits.

His aching bones instantly forgotten, the warrior knight jumped to his feet and darted to Tarrant's side who was still cowering against the wall, a glazed expression on his face. He looked so miserable, so utterly forlorn that Damien pulled him into his arms without thinking twice.

Shaking like a leaf, the adept instantly buried his head at his shoulder in a last desperate attempt to shield his face from the deadly kiss of the sun. _Undead or mortal, he evidently still has his priorities straight_ , Vryce thought in a flash of black humour. Then he could have kicked himself for his wholly inappropriate mirth. "It's alright, Gerald. Don't be afraid," he muttered soothingly. "You trust me, don't you? Then give me your hand. Give me your vulking hand, for God's sake! I swear that nothing bad will happen to you."

For what felt like a small eternity, Tarrant didn't move, just continued to tremble against him, but at long last his death grip on the warrior knight's broad shoulders relaxed, and he reluctantly offered his right hand.

Damien took it and cradled it against his chest like a cherished treasure without ever realizing, all the while marvelling at the human warmth of those long fingers and the slight rough patch where the adept must have grazed a rock during their haphazard descent from Shaitan the night before. It wouldn't have bothered the Hunter. But this wasn't the Hunter anymore but a man reborn, more vulnerable than he had been in a thousand years, doubtlessly thirsty and half starved and so far beyond the limits of his endurance that even a mind as brilliant as his had momentarily lost its bearings.

His heart aching for him, Vryce held tight and patiently waited for the sun to reach them. When the first tongues of liquid gold were feeling their way into the back of the cave, he guided their entwined fingers towards them ever so slowly until they were engulfed in light and warmth, a veritable embodiment of all things bright and beautiful.

Tarrant breathed a sigh, those molten pools of silver the warrior knight had so often written off as deadly cold wide with disbelief and wonder, and his own eyes filled with tears of gratefulness. The nature of the One God was indeed Mercy and His Word forgiveness, just as the Prophet of the Law had postulated so many years ago. Who else but Him in His infinite wisdom could have granted a being so steeped in evil like the Hunter a chance at redemption? In spite of their vast differences, Damien had prayed for that unlikely outcome like he had never prayed before, had betrayed some of the fundamental beliefs of his Church for Gerald's sake, no matter his rationalizations at the time, and suffered the undermining of his morality until the line between dark and light had blurred and redeeming his brother-in-arms, his friend, had become even more important to him than saving mankind from Calesta's clutches. To see him thus now, his grey eyes closed in rapture and his head tilted upwards like a flower savouring the first caress of the sun after a chill spring night, was a sight of heart-wrenching beauty and confirmation of God's amazing grace alike.

For all his religious fervour the down-to-earth warrior knight had never been a visionary, but for an instant which seemed to stretch right into eternity, he caught a glimpse of the mortal man Gerald Tarrant, the Neocount of Merentha, had once been prior to his fall into darkness. Basked in the clear morning light, Tarrant looked very much the saint and not the sinner, looked like the Prophet again, the founder of his faith and figurehead of the Church of Unification, and Damien could easily picture him robed in white and gold, the colours of their Order, as he was presiding over a Synod or leading Gannon's troops into battle.

Vryce's heartfelt prayers mingled with the far away rumble of Shaitan and the soft hiss of the adept's clothes as Gerald bent forward, face buried in his hands and his shoulders heaving convulsively.

Fighting down the nigh to overpowering urge to pull him into his arms and to hell with the consequences, Damien let him be, gave him the time he needed to come to terms with his emotions until Tarrant finally straightened and turned towards him.

Once again, the warrior knight couldn't help but marvelling at the changes the rite de passage of death and resurrection had wrought in his companion. Gerald's skin was still the colour of ivory, but a faint rosy tint to it told of the renewed flow of human blood in his veins. The black, icy cold liquid he had swallowed in order to complete their bond was a thing of the past, just another breeding ground for the nightmares that would doubtlessly haunt him in the years to come. But fact was that he didn't give a damn for them right now. His mind was occupied otherwise.

The ugly scar the Unnamed had marked him with aside, Tarrant was still breathtakingly beautiful and very likely would remain so until his dying day, the perfect proportions and delicate bone structure of his face negating any lines the grim poem of time might write upon it. _Behold, thou art fair, my love_ , Damien thought dazedly, quoting from a sacred text that had already been ancient when their forefathers from Earth had set out to conquer space. Then he realized what had just crossed his mind, and his heart skipped a beat.

Shaken to his very core, the warrior knight swallowed convulsively. This wasn't, mustn't be possible. Appalled by Tarrant's cruelty, it had taken him an eye-opener in form of a rescue mission to hell to admit to himself that his feelings for his brother-in-arms had undergone a profound change, even then still hiding his affection for the human soul trapped in the body of a monster behind a wall of gruffness. Accepting their friendship had come hard to him. Of course the pack had been reshuffled a few hours ago. Thanks to his own valour and the Mother of the Iezu, Gerald wasn't undead anymore but a mortal man. No harm in being on cordial terms with him, right? There was only one problem: The warm, fuzzy sensation blooming in his chest when looking at Tarrant was anything but merely amicable or brotherly, a very disturbing development indeed.

Try as he might, Damien couldn't tear his gaze away from him. For the first time ever he spotted a few fine lines around Tarrant's crystal clear grey eyes, eyes shining in a face so dirty that he instinctively fumbled for the least grimy of his shirttails. It was a lost cause right from the start. Trying to wipe away plaster and volcanic ash without any water, their meagre supplies being reserved for keeping them going until they found a clear stream or well on their way back, only served to spread the stuff more evenly over the adept's somewhat bemused visage.

Maybe Vryce would have gone on with his fruitless efforts a little bit longer, a welcome distraction from the words trembling on his tongue that must never be spoken. But as fate had it, two of his fingers brushed a high cheekbone on their journey, returned to it as if drawn by a Calling powerful beyond his imagination, and he found himself literally unable to move while the piece of fabric slipped from his hand, completely forgotten.


End file.
